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Teen lifers: Dwayne Morningwake wants another chance, but would be entering a foreign world

His tattoos ensure he won't forget that he helped kill a man. But 'to be thrown away doesn't make sense,' he says.

By REBECCA LeFEVERDaily Record/Sunday News

Updated:
02/12/2013 10:42:52 PM EST

Eleven York County juveniles have been sentenced to life in prison without parole since 1974.
Many have spent decades in prison.
Any comfort the victims' families took from the sentence was threatened when, last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a mandatory life sentence for a juvenile found guilty of murder is unconstitutional.
Will those York County teens -- now adults -- have a chance at parole? Some are asking for a second chance. (Illustration by Samantha K. Dellinger, York Daily Record/Sunday News)

Life, imprisoned

· Read about the effect in Pennsylvania of the Supreme Court's decision making it unconstitutional to have mandatory life sentences for teens who have been convicted of murder.

This is the story of one of those convicts now in limbo.

***

Dwayne Morningwake celebrated his 40th birthday in July.

He wasn't expecting much of a celebration.

Nothing special is done for someone's birthday when they're in state prison, he said. It's just another day that marks the time spent there.

He has spent the past 25 birthdays behind bars.

As a juvenile who was sentenced to life without parole, Morningwake got a gift of hope with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling last year that mandatory life without parole for juveniles is unconstitutional. He wonders if someday he'll have a birthday outside the walls of a state prison.

At 15, just a month before his 16th birthday, Morningwake was arrested in connection with the death of Kwame Beatty, a youth counselor in a North York group home. Beatty was stabbed to death in his bed June 17, 1988.

Four people were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Beatty's murder.

Miguel Yoder, 16 at the time of the murder, and Michael Lehman, 14 at the time, are still serving their sentences. Cornell L. Mitchell, 25 at the time, died of AIDS in Huntingdon State Prison on Nov. 21, 1991, his second year in prison.

Morningwake has been moved from one facility to another -- first York County Prison, then an array of state prisons: Camp Hill, Rockview, Graterford and Albion. He was interviewed for this story at Albion, but has since returned to Rockview.

He's spent so much time in those prisons, Morningwake wonders if he'd be ready to adjust to the way the world has changed while he was gone.

A life in prison

In state prison, he is able to own a radio.

"You either get a radio or a cassette player, but not both," he said. The radios are "pretty crappy" from what he remembers before he was incarcerated.

More recently, inmates have been allowed to buy flat-screen TVs. But they're not the normal luxury items you find in a home, he said. They're just computer monitors through which the prison streams a cable signal, Morningwake said.

"That's about all the technology I know," he said.

He sees commercials for new gadgets and shakes his head.

Dwayne Morningwake, for juvenile lifer story. submitted

"I see the iBook," he said, before correcting himself. "I mean the iPad. I see those phones where you put everything you have on it. That scares me. What happens if you lose it? There goes your life."

The few pieces of technology that he is familiar with keep him occupied in his down time.

The little entertainment they provide, along with programs he has been able to get into, "are a blessing."

Through a prison program, Morningwake earned his GED in 1994.

He later took some advanced math classes, for which he earned a certificate.

He's tried to get into an electronics program, but has been denied admission.

"It's hard to get into anything that will help you improve yourself, because what's the point?" he said. "I'm likely never going to get out of here. There's no point in investing in me."

If no one will help him become educated, he said, he will educate himself. He reads in the morning when his cellmate is at work and other people go out to the yard.

But being behind bars takes away more than your opportunity for an education, Morningwake said.

He's been absent from many of the big events in the lives of his family members.

He worries that he won't be there to care for his mother as she ages.

His sister, who lives in Ohio, visits when she can. They talk on the phone and write more often, he said.

Morningwake said his brother hasn't seen him since he was 15.

Neither Morningwake's mother or sister returned phone calls for this story.

The hardest part of being away from family was when his father died in 2009.

"(Prison officials) brought me into the chapel and let me call my mother and my sister," Morningwake said. "That's the worst it can get in prison."

Struggles with authority

Learning to work through his low points has been a struggle for Morningwake.

He goes through periods of time where he's OK -- he understands why he is there and tries to make the best of it by making friends and getting a job.

But there are times when he isn't OK.

When he doesn't want to be there.

When he struggles with authority.

In November 1997, Morningwake said, he and two other convicted killers decided they weren't going to put up with it anymore.

They were going to run away.

It's something Morningwake said he considered for more than three years before finally acting on it.

In 1994 he had been denied a retrial and it pushed him into a period of "depression and rebellion."

But their efforts weren't worth it, he said.

Morningwake and the two other men were thought to be missing from Rockview State Prison in Centre County for five hours before being found inside a closed chapel at the prison. He was charged with escape.

"I thought that having five minutes of freedom would be worth whatever punishment," Morningwake said. "I never got out."

He spent five months "in the hole" for his attempt.

And then things started to get better. He went 10 years without a write-up, he said.

After arriving at Albion , he was on good behavior. Sixty days without a write-up means an inmate can have a job, he said.

Before going back to Rockview, he worked in Albion's kitchen five days a week for five hours a day.

"It keeps me in line," he said at the time.

Getting out

Not a day goes by that Morningwake doesn't hope he'll be granted parole.

"I did what I did, but to be thrown away doesn't make sense," he said. "There's always something in life you have to work towards and to not have that doesn't make sense."

Morningwake now attends anti-violence classes through the prison.

He is the only juvenile lifer in the group, but he says the discussions are helpful.

In the almost three decades he has spent in prison, Morningwake believes he has become a better person.

If he were to get a chance for parole, to get out of jail, he said, he would get a job.

"Probably two," he said. "I don't shy away from hard labor and it would help me keep away from the mindset that got me here."

He also wants to take care of his mother.

He worries about her being alone.

But even if he got out, he'd always carry the memories of his crime, and the memories of prison.

He's made sure of that with numerous tattoos that line his arms.

On each of his biceps is a demon -- one red, the other green. On his left forearm is a skeleton joker. It has long hair, like he did years ago.

And on his right forearm is a knife.

It represents the homicide.

"It's there so I never forget," he said. "So I look at it every day and know why I'm here."

The victim's family

Other than seeing Beatty's family in court, Morningwake hasn't had any contact with them.

He doesn't know how he would react to them after all this time.

Kwame Beatty's brother, JoMo Beatty of Springettsbury Township, has been studying the Supreme Court's decision regarding juveniles sentenced to life without parole.

JoMo said he has a hard time being empathetic to those "who committed brutal crimes against my brother."

"I'm not their judge nor their jury," he said. "But I feel they will answer for this when they die."

JoMo said there was a time when he hated the men who killed his brother. He would be consumed by anger he couldn't control.

"As far as I'm concerned they don't deserve another day on the streets," he said.

JoMo no longer works with children in group homes. He felt himself looking on those kids the way he would Lehman, Yoder and Morningwake.

"It was unfair to those kids who had nothing to do with that," JoMo said.

There was a time he wanted to see the men who killed his brother, but he no longer has that desire.

Years ago, he asked God to take his anger.

He believes he's found peace in serving the Lord. He focuses on that, along with being a father, a husband and a son.

Even though Kwame is no longer with his family, they see him in JoMo's 11-year-old son. The boy was named after his uncle.

Life, imprisoned

In June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to sentence a juvenile found guilty of murder to mandatory life in prison.
A new Pennsylvania law bans that sentence for convictions after June 24, 2012. But state courts haven't addressed whether or how that ruling could affect those already serving life without parole.
Some of York County's teen lifers want a second chance.